


Human Nature is a Michael Jackson single

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, WKRP in Cincinnati
Genre: 1970s, Amnesia, Crossover, Episode AU: s03e08 Human Nature, Humor, Radio, Slice of Life, the Doctor is in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14895944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: Johnny can't remember when he started calling himself the Doctor; but it fits him like a stinky old pair of socks. One of the few constants in his otherwise muddled and transitory life.Whatever it was, anyway.(Human Nature rewrite, in the setting of WKRP.)





	Human Nature is a Michael Jackson single

**Author's Note:**

> Mild swearing.

_I._ “You don’t like pears,” Bailey says, all but ripping the fruit from his hands.

Johnny’s noticed she swings between two poles. She'll be shy, accepting, receptive- then angrily aggressive, with the inchoate energy of a confused second-waver - but he’s never figured out what triggers the switch, or how to ward it off. “Hey. It’s fruit. Aren’t you always saying I should be eating more of the green stuff?”

“Take a banana,” she says, brandishing the curved peel like a sword. He shakes his head, but accepts it. The soft, flaky white flesh is soft under his tongue, fragrant against his teeth.

For a moment, he fixates on the experience totally: as though this is the first banana he’s ever eaten, as though he’s taking a brand-new body for a spin and every experience is new. Flashbacks are the damndest things.

“You’re right. This tastes pretty good.”

“You told me about the pears, this one time. When you came in, I dunno, a little aerated.” Bailey is fading back to passivity again, with a secret smile he cannot for the life of him interpert. Sure, there’s a bit of hero worship and some straight-up lust mixed up in it, god knows why, but what else? “You said it was very important to you.”

“This was my gift basket, not yours,” Les protests, looking a little hurt. He hugs the thing defensively. 

“Technically it’s the station’s,” Andy says, taking out a bright red apple for himself. “WKRP, says so right there on the front.”

“But it had my name on it!”

“Share and share alike,” Johnny says, tossing his banana peel towards the garbage can. It balances on the edge for a moment before slipping to the floor. Herb manages to trip on it, landing squarely on his brown-and-orange checked rear.

It’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen; of course he laughs.

Even with Bailey’s disapproving gaze on his.

 

 _II._ “You ever gonna tell me what it was like, man?” Venus asks one night.

Venus is thirty to his forty (forty-one, he reminds himself, and where the hell did the time go?); his friend would like to hear about his wild storied past, the mythical 60s when DJs were men, groupies were groupies, and the airwaves rained down sweet rock across America. “I live in the present, okay? Don’t look back, don’t reminisce, don’t think about anything. It’s over. Done. No time travelling.”

“Uh-huh. What’s the real reason?”

“If you remember the '60s, you weren't there,” Johnny says, taking a long slurp at his beer. They are in some terrible themed bar across the river, same as the ones they usually frequent except that this one has dusty Guinness signs plastered on the walls, and a drinks menu written in some kind of ye olde Cockney gibberish. Impulse has brought them here; at least, he’s blaming impulse, because he can’t imagine why else he picked this watering hole. “Don’t take drugs, kids. It’ll addle your brains.”

He lets his eyes pop out, his face contort slackly and grotesquely; Venus rolls his eyes. “And that’s why you never share any of your weed, huh? Nursemaiding the rest of us?”

“I’m protecting my dwindling supply. I mean, Cincinatti! This has got to be the squarest city on the face of the earth.”

“I don’t seem to have any trouble,” Venus says, smiling just a little crookedly. A little bit of race-irony there, Johnny thinks, but mostly the axis is youth-to-age. ( _You’re getting old, Fever. Slowing down. What kind of DJ can’t figure out how to score himself a few bags of weed on the side?_ )“Want me to hook you up?”

“Later, maybe. When I’ve run out of prime Grade-A California joints.” He flags down a harassed-looking waitress. “Hey. How about the fish and chips?”

“Fish is off.”

“Okay. Sausage and mash.”

“Sausage is off.”

“Steak and cheese pie?”

“Pie’s off.”

“Well, this is sure some bar.”

“We have beer,” the waitress sniffs. “Isn’t that what you guys came here for?”

“Probably,” Johnny agrees.

“Definitely,” Venus chimes in. So they order another round. “But come on. There must be some pretty far-out stories rattling inside that head of yours.”

“Uh- I did improv with Mick Jagger once.”

“Now that is the kind of thing I’m talking about! Let’s hear it.”

Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he’s making it up as he goes along. He couldn’t swear to anything in a court of law.

But if his life’s going to be this hazy anyway, well...might as well enjoy it.

 

 _III._ “Herb, will you shut up asking about my mother’s mobile home?”

“But I’m interested,” Herb persists, with his scary voice. The I-am-now-putting-you-under-my-control salesman’s voice, which is so remarkably dumb that any child ought to be able to laugh it off; but sometimes it works. Johnny has personally witnessed this, and it freaks him out. “I mean, come on Fever, you never talk about your childhood. I’m curious.”

“It was all over the place,” Johnny says, pulling Les’ door to without a sound (he is in no position to mock somebody else’s arbitrary insanity). “I mean, we went everywhere on the map. Guy like you wouldn’t understand- you're from Cincinnati, aren't you?”

“Born and bred,” Herb says with satisfaction. “Lucille makes noises about Florida, but I’ve told her, time-share yes, moving there, no. I was brought up here, I’m raising my kids here, and by God, when I die I’m going to have six feet of quality Midwestern soil for a coffin. We’re already making payments on the plot.”

“And that all strikes you as a good thing.”

“Sure.”

“Instead of, say, the most terrifying fate in the known universe.”

“No,” Herb says promptly, and starts trying to sell him on funeral insurance. Johnny demurs. WKRP is a great place for a washed-up DJ with no prospects, sure; there are times he catches himself even liking the place.

But: damned if he’s going to die in Ohio. And that’s just the way it is.

 

 _IV._ “Is there something I can help you with, Johnny?” Jennifer asks him.

“Uh, no. Just admiring the view. That’s a very nice day outside.”

“If you like gray, wet storm clouds, it certainly is.” She shuffles papers on her desk, with nice neat motions. Everything she does is graceful like that.

He’s looking at her, and she knows he’s looking at him, and he knows she knows he’s looking at her while pretending to be admiring the Ohio River, and if they can layer on enough levels of he-knows-she-knows maybe it will obfuscate what’s actually going on here, which is this: he’s looking at Jennifer because she’s sexy. Any man with functioning eyeballs would confirm that. Probably any woman, come to that.

Of course, he tries to keep it professional; not slobbering all over her like Herb, not puppy-dog worshipping her like Les, not making a big production out of being a father figure and scoring hugs for it, as Arthur seems to like to do. They’re co-workers. Whatever else he’s done in his life, he’s tried to never make his companions-in-arms feel uncomfortable just because he’s walked into the room.

(Companions? Is that the word he’s thinking of?)

Still…”See, uh, I guess I misunderstood something earlier. I thought you said I had a nice ass.”

Jennifer giggles. Jennifer throws back her head and laughs, hitting such a note of hilarity that the only thing missing from the scene is somebody dubbing on a sad trombone. “Johnny, that was my handyman I was talking about.”

Ah.

 _This is never gonna happen,_ a part of his head whispers. The organised part that gets stuff done while he’s drifting and thinking about music, the survival instinct that remembers to pay his electric bill and throw out month-old milk. He visualises it as blue, for some reason. Blue with neat white lines.

“The one you just dumped for being a different kind of ass, right?”

“That’s true.”

“Okay. Hope springs eternal,” Johnny says, waggling his eyebrows together.

For a moment, he’s tempted to say that he’s just communicated a love message to her, in a mystic alien tongue: but that’s too stupid even for him.

“Don’t bet on it."

“Right. I’ll, uh, I’ll just be getting back to the booth now.”

He loves his booth. Hardly bigger than a telephone box, but containing a galaxy of wonders: glam, progressive, British Invasion. Being away from it too long makes him unaccountably nervous; on the rare vacation days that Andy foists upon him, he’ll still usually drop by the station to criticise his fill-in DJ, or sit quietly by to soak up Venus’ show. 

That’s his real love, better and more fulfilling than any woman (or guy, for that matter); Jennifer knows that, and what she really wants is somebody who’ll be totally engrossed by her and her alone, possessed night and day by that walk, that hair, that devastating smile. Which is more than understandable.

He knows. She knows he knows.

“I know,” Jennifer says, smiling gently.

Johnny gets the hell out of there before things can get any weirder.


End file.
